The nature of flesh

it is a funny thing to be a living multi-cellular creature. You are made up of billions of tiny living entities, most of them specialized, who cooperate to give the larger organism the opportunity to keep existing. We are seldom even conscious of it, but it is true. With my daughter's pregnancy, I am reminded of this truth, since she's baking a new such entity that will, sometime in April, be a new granddaughter!

In tonight's vespers, we pray, "Let all flesh bless his holy name, for ever and ever." What is it to be such an unusual and complex construction of biological purpose? I doubt any of us can fully understand. But I think we make it harder when we tell ourselves that body and soul are distinct. But they really are not, at least not while we are here. Every single thing we sense and do is reflected in chemicals, electrons and sinew.

It is never mind over matter. Mind with matter, perhaps. But flesh can aspire to more than corporeal corruption. It is why the Bible speaks of "ressurection", the implication that our full restoration incorporates some kind of physicality. Perhaps it is even why Egyptians spent forty days mummifying people for what they imagined to be a corporeal journey.

It is hard to know what this means, considering the complexities of physics and biology. But with my hope set on a stone that rolled away the first Easter morning, it is the mystery I contemplate every day - what is it to be a man, with his sights set on being something more? And what will it be to be this "more" should we attain it?